When paneling elements of plastic are mounted on a metallic substructure, the former have a tendency of expanding substantially more when heated. When a connection between the substructure and paneling element does not have the necessary play in order to permit displacements associated with this different expansion characteristic, the paneling element has a tendency of bending and suffering damage under the effect of heat, for example when it is exposed to the sun.
During drying following the painting, the motor vehicle body is exposed to even higher temperatures than during sun irradiation. In order for a paneling element to survive this also without damage, a freedom of movement relative to the substructure is required which reaches or even exceeds the order of magnitude of the gap width between adjacent paneling elements of the body. Such a large freedom of movement can result in that during the course of time, paneling elements migrate on the motor vehicle body and the gap width between such a paneling element and an adjacent body element visibly changes.
DE 10 2009 011 546 A1 describes a motor vehicle with a substructure and a paneling element of plastic. In this case a sliding element is displaceably received in an elongated hole of the paneling element and a screw extends through the sliding element in order to fix the latter to a substructure. When the dimensions of the elongated hole are large enough in order to be able to exclude the bending of the paneling element even during the drying of the paint, the gap width between the paneling element and an adjacent paneling element of the motor vehicle body can also change during the utilization of the motor vehicle because of repeated temperature changes.